There are 4 entries for this date: Declaration of Independence, Frances Wright, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Kay Nolte Smith.

"Declaration of Independence" On this date in 1776, Thomas Jefferson's "Declaration of Independence" was signed. Its secular purpose was to "dissolve the political bands," and it inaugurated the anti-biblical idea that "governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Jefferson was a Deist who was highly critical of Christianity, and whose revolutionary document made references to a "Nature's God."

Frances Wright On this date in 1828, freethinker Frances Wright became the first woman to speak publicly from the podium as the featured speaker, before a mixed audience of men and women, in North America. At age 34, Wright delivered the July 4 address at New Harmony, Indiana.

On this date in 1807, Giuseppe Garibaldi was born. Although his father wanted him to be a priest, Garibaldi set out to sea as a youth. He took part in the conspiracy of 1834, for which he was forced to flee from Italy. After adventurous travels, the famed Italian compatriot took a major role in work to emancipate Italy from outside rule. After the failed revolution of 1848, he traveled to America. He returned with a band of revolutionaries in 1859, then again in 1862 and 1870. He was elected to the Italian Parliament in 1872. Garibaldi called the Vatican "the Sacred Shop," and rejected all creeds. D. 1882.

On this date in 1932, Kay Nolte Smith was born in Minnesota. She received her B.A. from the University of Minnesota in 1952 and her Master's degree in theater and speech from the University of Utah in 1955. She married Prof. Philip Smith in 1958. She and her husband went into professional theatre together, co-producing Ayn Rand's "Penthouse Legend." She made TV commercials, performed off Broadway for a decade, joined several faculties as a teacher, then turned her energies to writing. Her first novel, Watcher (1980), won the Edgar Allen Poe award, followed by Mindspell (1983), Country of the Heart (1988), and Tale of the Wind (1991). Mindspell delved into the witchhunts. After her research for that book, Kay asserted that records of this heinous time should be "mandatory reading in every Sunday school. This is what made me an atheist. Consider how deeply witch craze was rooted in religion. The papal sanction was not abolished for six centuries. How can anyone belong to a church that treated its members this way?" (Feminist Connection interview, December 1983). D. 1993.